Mythological Constructions of the African American Self: An Analysis of African American Appropriations of Christian and Islamic Mythologies

In this dissertation I analyze how African Americans have appropriated, reinterpreted and created four religious mythological constructs to positively redefine their own identity over a period of two centuries. Focusing especially on slave spirituals and writings from black religious leaders and prominent spokesmen such as David Walker, Martin R. Delany, James Theodore Holly, Edward Wilmot Blyden, Noble Drew Ali and Elijah Muhammad, I demonstrate that each myth has had a distinctive value for African Americans, addressing various needs created by specific historical circumstances. Specifically, I argue that the African American use of religious mythology from their conversion to Christianity in the eighteenth century up to the creation of African American Islamic movements around the 1930’s, reflects a process of gradual African American alienation both from the white population and from their original idea of America as the chosen nation. In essence, I read the various stages in African American appropriations of religious mythology as a process of shifting focus from constructing an African American identity, towards constructing an African American one.